GameLauncher / News: Recent posts

GameLauncher 2.0 Beta now features a redesigned User Interface! Also, library filename generation bugs have been fixed and new automatic engines/extensions discovery system has been put into use that uses tags within engine.xml files to build a supported extensions list.

GameLauncher 2.0 Beta has been updated! The new filename generation logic now works (Ooops!), and the table menu has been fixed. Amoung the new features are a Usage Data Reset button on the Advanced panel of the game editor, as well as a play timer that records the total number of Hours, Minutes, and Seconds a game has been played!

GameLauncher 2.0 Beta has been updated with a new built-in IPS ROM patcher complete with rollback support, new lightning fast import/export logic, and automatically generated ROM filenames. As the filename generation has changed and is now dependant on numbering, it is recommended that users export all of their ROMs, reset their Game Database, and re-import their ROMs to avoid file overwritting on import. Also, the patcher limits one patch per ROM to avoid ROM breakages which are almost always caused by multiple patches.

GameLauncher 2.0 has been updated! Along with several other fixes, a new option has been added to the Initial Setup Wizard which allows users to select a custom location for the game library (Useful for windows users with limited profile space). Also, an online update option has been added to the Update Center, although no online updates will be released prior to the final 2.0 version. The 2.0 development release now available as well.

After a long... long... wait, GameLauncher 2.0 Beta is finally here! :D Contrary to the last news post, we were able to get GameLauncher to import the settings and database from any one of the old versions by simply ignoring any attributes that don't exist! Doh! Talk about an easy solution that was staring us in the face the whole time! Anyway, this release is running in development mode, meaning it's home folder will be named "gamelauncher-devel" instead of "gamelauncher". That way, it can coexist with future "stable" releases, as well as any v1.9 installs that anybody wants to keep seperate. A Windows installer and development release of this version will hopefully follow shortly. Also, we will be releasing an automated tool for renaming the "gamelauncher-devel" home folders to "gamelauncher" for lazy people!

After much consideration, it has been decided that GameLauncher 2.0 will be unable to import the Game Library and Settings from previous GameLauncher versions. As such, users of previous versions will be required to "Export" each game in their library prior to upgrading to 2.0. More detailed instructions will be listed following the pending GameLauncher 2.0 Stable release. Future releases will import settings relative to GameLauncher 2.0's feature set, the rest will be reset to their default values.

After a lengthy holiday break, the GameLauncher team is back hard at work! Development is going smoothly with GameLauncher now fully Java 1.6.0 compatible! The plugins framework is also progressing nicely with multi-user capability now possible. System tray icon support has been proposed and will be added to the program prior to the next Development Release. Updated development packs will be out within the next few days, and will be the first under the version 2.0.

A bug has been discovered that inhibits the ability to import ROMs associated with manually added engines within GameLauncher. Attempts to import the newly associated ROMs will result in the ImportDialog failing to display and the GUI being uselessly blocked by the still running InfiniteProgressPanel. This bug affects all 1.9 releases to date, however only immediately affects Development Release users and Advanced End-Users wishing to manually add their own engines to the application and in doing so adding lines to the extensions.xml file located in the engines folder. Normal end-users using only the bundled engines are unaffected by this bug, as are users simply replacing the bundled engines. A temporary solution to this bug is to create folders with the same name as the type attribute of the extension lines added to the extensions.xml file within the users library, as GameLauncher will at present not automatically create them and as such fail when trying to copy the requested game to the users library in which no sub-folder exists to hold that type of file. ... read more

Official Non-Beta releases have been scheduled for this weekend! The official non-beta features an initial setup wizard that includes a system compatibility check and will be distributed using IzPack-created installers. So far Unix and MacOS X official release dates are unknown. Users wishing to use GameLauncher under these platforms should use the development release and manually install engines instead.

IzSetup produced installations of the latest 1.9 Beta End-User release have been uploaded. These setups, one cross-platform, one wrapped, are destined to replace the native ones when proven stable enough. So far the install only includes windows engines.

After some short downtime, I am releasing another update of the GameLauncher-1.9Beta. Added is a new four-star rating system. This will hopefully be the last beta release with end-user packages expected for the end of this weekend.

The GameLauncher 1.9Beta-DevelopmentRelease has been released! The development releases are early releases of a version that are submitted whenever the source code reaches a stable milestone! As such they are intended for developers or advanced users, and are updated often (Usualy every time I make a backup of my project folder). Anyway, check it out!